Fidelitas
by redcat512
Summary: No one would ever accuse James Bond of being careless with his heart. Bond&England, Bond&M, Bond/Vesper. Spoilers for CR and SF.


**Notes:** 2nd person, Bond's POV, Mentions of Casino Royale and Skyfall events.

* * *

People assume you're afraid of commitment, that that's why you don't do anything more serious than a one-night stand. They're wrong, though.

Rather, you suppose you _are_ afraid of commitment, but not for the reasons they assume. Partly it's because you're afraid of any emotional attachment being used against you, and partly you don't really like to trust people. Those are simple, straightforward reasons, and they make logical sense for a person in your line of work.

But really, those reasons are just what you use to justify yourself when people ask (those that dare), because the real reason is something that's not easily tied up in a pretty package of words and people _like_ having neat, shorthand little labels to stick on things, so sure, you'll be _untrusting_ and _paranoid_ and _cold _if it suits them.

You're loyal, is the thing. _To a fault_, you would add self-deprecatingly, in jest – only not really, because it _is_ a fault, isn't it?

Once you give your loyalty to someone or something – and that's so desperately rare: you gave it once, twice, three times – it's theirs for life. Unconditional love, if you will. Silva didn't get that, did he, when tried to tell you M would have betrayed you like she did him. It hurt, that she sent you out broken to deal with her own mess, but hurt has never stopped love before, at least never for you. In any case, love can never truly disappear, as Silva so aptly showed. It can mutate, it can become ugly and twisted, (_heaven hath no rage like love to hatred turned_ oh how true that is), but it all still comes from the same place, from _caring_, from being _invested_, because the true opposite of love isn't hatred – they're just two sides of the same coin.

The true opposite of love (of both, really) is indifference.

People don't think you're all that hung up on loyalty, when they judge by your actions. _So you're loyal to England_, they'll say, _well, that's all very well and good, but it's easy to be good to your country, isn't it? _(_It's not_, you would argue, _not for me_, but that's another argument entirely). You sleep with married people left, right and centre. No respect for other people's loyalty, and none yourself by extrapolation, surely.

But that's the thing, see. You have plenty of respect for loyalty when it's _there_. You're not blameless; you don't claim that, but there's a difference between setting out to destroy something that was whole to begin with and waltzing in at the last moment to put the final straw onto a camel's back. Most of the marriages you interrupt were broken to begin with, and you don't take solace in that fact but nor do you let it keep you up at night. You have plenty of your own demons for that.

Vesper got your loyalty once. She was the enemy in the end, though, and that brought into conflict your other loyalty: to England. But you're nothing if not a master of getting out seemingly impossible situations, and surely you would have worked out something to satisfy both your mistresses – only Vesper took that out of your hands by dying, didn't she? You suppose it would have seemed hopeless to her, but you eat (_drink_) hopeless for breakfast and you would have made it work, somehow.

The thing is, about your loyalty, is that it's so very dangerous a gift. Unconditional love sounds all very well and good on paper, but in your world, unconditional doesn't mean _in sickness and in health_, it means _through heaven and hell_, _through fire and water_, _through life and death_, because there isn't a convenient _til death do us part _clause, for you. Your loyalty stretches past the grave; in spirit if not in action (_the bitch is dead_ – oh but you would have saved her at the cost of everything else if you'd only had the chance).

_Unconditional_ to you means: at the cost of bad people, at the cost of strangers, at the cost of good people, at the cost of a million, at the cost of _you_. You would give the world and everything in it, once you've given _unconditional_ to someone and that's why it's the most dangerous and precious thing you could give away, that's why you don't, as a general rule, except when no (or less) conflict can occur. (M and England work concurrently, Vesper and a life away from espionage might have worked.)

Vesper got your loyalty once - only she still has it, because _unconditional_ is not something that you can ever take back.

* * *

When people ask, you're: _untrusting_, _paranoid_ and _cold_ because labels are easy.

You don't know that you will or won't give your loyalty to someone again. The possibility remains even if you're aware and apprehensive of the potential fallout. You're a fool like that, because guarded though you are with your heart, you'll continue to gift pieces away when they're earned and sometimes even when they're not because that to you is what _unconditional_ is all about.

* * *

**end**


End file.
